exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

So around this time last year, I upgraded both my 800XL and 65XE to have Ultimate 1MB and VBXL/XE. At the time, I also upgraded my main machine, the 800XL (I prefer the keyboard to that of the XE)

A year on (My birthday again) I decided it was time to give the 65XE the PokeyMax treatment.

The first step was to ID the Pokey (I'd previously written Pokey on it, so that was easy!) and desolder it from the mainboard, seen here waiting for the replacement to drop in.


Once I'd installed a socket, then it was simply a matter of dropping in the PokeyMax:


You can see the VBXE adapter just behind it, which amongst other things adds 80 column support, additional hardware sprites and additional graphics modes (Hop over to Lotharek to see what's on offer) and right at the back is the U1MB.

Next step was to test and be sure it ran as a normal Pokey, which it did. The next steps are to connect the L/R stereo channels to the 13 pin DIN (A la ST) video connector which is 1088XEL compatible and drives the RGB SCART connection beautifully.

I'll probably pop the lid off my 800XL to remind me how to hook up the PokeyMax to the U1MB and video socket as it'll be easier than digging out all the install paperwork again.

Then I'll need to flash the U1MB with FJCs latest firmware as it provides better PokeyMax support.

I'd better have a tidy up of the rats nest of wiring too whilst I'm at it.

I'll post more as I do it :)

So I got round to finishing off the 65XE Pokeymax install.

For comparison here is the 800XL which I used as a reference for fitting the additional wiring:


And here is the 65XE:


You can also see how different the positioning of the U1MB and VBXL/XE is between machines on account of the different board layouts.

800XL: U1MB Top right, VBXL bottom left ish.
65XE: U1MB Top left, VBXE top centre.

There is a lot of extraneous wiring, but you can see the PokeyMax is more or less in the same place on both machines and the stereo output feeds the 13 pin 1088XEL socket on the back of the machine.

Stereo sounds great on both.

And here we are ready for final assembly and testing.


Another neat upgrade done :)

@rubber_jonnie nicely done. Wonder if I can upgrade my Incognito 800 to pokeymax.

PhilC wrote: 27 Nov 2021 19:40 @rubber_jonnie nicely done. Wonder if I can upgrade my Incognito 800 to pokeymax.

It's a drop in Pokey replacement, so I'd have thought even if there is no Incognito integration like there is with the U1MB, you could still do normal stereo wiring.

@PhilC You may want to have a look here: https://atari-owner.com/club/blogs/atar ... on-blog.5/

The writer talks about using the PokeyMax as just a Pokey replacement, so 'drop in' mode, and also discusses connecting it up to the CPU later.

You maybe only need to connect 1 wire each to the CPU and GTIA (Does the 800 have a CTIA instead?) and then you'd need to hookup the stereo out to some RCA jacks that go to the outside world.

The docs can be found here: https://retrolemon.co.uk/atari-8bit-upg ... tereo.html

I think it'd be easy for a man of your talents :)

@rubber_jonnie thanks, will have a good read.

PhilC wrote: 28 Nov 2021 12:02 @rubber_jonnie thanks, will have a good read.

Cool, look forward to reading the project blog ;)